


Tea

by romashka



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gals being pals, postgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-10 23:25:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7865566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romashka/pseuds/romashka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roxy is struggling with her alcoholism again and asks Jane over for emotional support, which stops being entirely platonic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tea

Roxy swirls the plain cranberry juice in her glass listlessly. This is ridiculous, she thinks. It’s a wine glass, as if she could somehow trick herself. Cranberry red is too bright to look like wine anyway. This is pathetic. God, she just really wants a drink. A real drink. The world is too sharp around the edges for her to exist like this. She’s weak, weak, she thinks, but she no longer cares. She wants to be weak, the weakest, sinking down again, comfortable. She wants to mix her thoughts up like a painting getting smudged until you can’t tell what it was supposed to be anymore. _Haha,_ she thinks, _that was poetic as fuck._

Roxy slumps at the table. She idly reaches out her hand and begins to form a green cube, feeling the now-familiar pins and needles that come with absorbing void. She makes another, and another. She stacks them up beside her glass. She raises her hand again and a fourth cube takes shape…wait. This one’s blue. A very specific shade of blue. She stares at it for a long moment, and decides it’s telling her the list of people who can make her feel better right now is limited to just one girl.

She gets up and near-drags herself over to the seat by the corded phone, clutching the blue cube and leaving her drink. She has a cell phone, but there’s always something about the old-fashioned-ness of a receiver and its twirly cable that appeals to her. She has Jane’s number memorised, naturally. 

Jane picks up on the third ring. “Roxy? Is that you?”

“Yeah, Jane. Jaaane…” Roxy’s voice is almost a whine at this point as she lingers on Jane’s name, the way she used to when they were younger and she was noninfrequently hammered. She wonders if she’s even all that different for being sober.

“Goodness, are you alright? I must say you don’t sound very happy!”

“Can you come over?”

Jane doesn’t say anything for a moment. Roxy silently berates herself. Of course she can’t come over. It’s late. It’s not her job to be Roxy’s psychological crutch. She has her own life.

But Jane speaks then, with concern in her voice. “Of course. Of course I will.” Just like that, with no questions asked. 

Roxy all of a sudden feels doused in emotion. “Thank you, thank you so much,” she says, with a waver in her voice that she’s not sure if she wants Jane to hear. “Get here soon please,” she adds a little more quietly, then quickly wishes she didn’t sound so needy.

“I’m on my way,” says Jane, and hangs up.

While she waits, Roxy engages in that old pastime of making a green cube pyramid and hiding from the world in it. She brings her DS with her and tries not to think about anything too much, largely without success. She abandons her game. She wonders if there’s any way, with her powers, that she could perhaps remove the absence of vodka from the cranberry juice. She tries to stop thinking about that. She tries to think about Jane instead. _So sweet, so nice, so caring. So…_ The next word that springs to mind is ‘hot’. No, she doesn’t need this either. God fucking dammit. She has requested Jane’s presence for emotional support, not BFF sexytimes. Though she can’t deny that sounds good.

When the doorbell sounds, Roxy bursts out of the pyramid, scattering the cubes haphazardly, and hurries to the door. “Janey,” she smiles as the door swings open, “You’re here.”

Jane stands there slightly flushed, as if she really had hurried. “I couldn’t very well ignore my best girl in her hour of need.”

Roxy feels suddenly guilty. “It’s not really my hour of need or whatever. It’s just I was feeling a bit sad because I couldn’t have a drink anymore and the world isn’t as nice when you can’t do that. But you’re nice, Janey. You make it nice. And I started making a bunch of cubes and then I made one that was the exact colour of your eyes, just because of my subconscious I guess, and it made me think that I needed you to be here with me right now, and-”

“Oh, shush!” says Jane. She steps inside and closes the door. “It’s okay. I’m always happy to see you. I just don’t really know how I can help.”

Roxy snorts.

“What? Did I say something wrong?”

“No, no, it’s just it’s…it’s like some bad porno where you say that and I’m like ‘well, there is one thing’ with my voice all breathless, and then – I don’t know, it’s just kind of funny.”

“Goodness me, that’s really not an association I would have made!” Jane looks very embarrassed. Why would Roxy say something like that out loud? “Should I make some tea, or something?”

Roxy flops down onto the sofa, choosing to ignore the terrible faux pas God knows what has possessed her to make. “Oh, thank you. Yeah, tea is good. Probably better for me than this juice that just constantly wants to remind me how much alcohol it doesn’t have in it.”

Jane goes to put the kettle on and soon returns with two mugs of tea. The one she’s chosen for Roxy has lots of different cat breeds on it, and it’s Roxy’s favourite. Jane sets the mugs down and settles next to her. She feels there are some things they badly need to talk about, but maybe Roxy is a little too fragile for that tonight. Maybe she just needs a friend, a distraction. “Would you like to watch a movie?” says Jane.

Roxy nods. They pick out some frivolous rom-com and watch it in silence for a while. Movies are good, thinks Roxy, because for a couple of hours you can replace your own problems with someone else’s, and theirs are always more glamorous. 

But she’s fairly certain the main thing making her feel better is Jane’s presence beside her. She thinks of how lonely she used to be, how many times she tried to appearify Jane even though she knew it wouldn’t work. She’s struck again by how lucky she is that the wonderfulness that is Jane Crocker is now so easily available to hang out with her. “I don’t deserve you,” she says, almost imperceptibly quietly. 

“What?”

“Nothing…”

After a few moments’ consideration, Jane turns the volume down and pulls Roxy very close, almost on top of her. “Listen to me, Lalonde, you deserve everything. You _deserve_ a tiara with the biggest diamond in it and your own private island, and you absolutely definitely deserve friends who love you. You might not think you’re strong, but you are.”

Roxy’s eyes well up. She hugs Jane tightly, immensely comforted by her warm solidity. “I love you, Janey, so much,” she says, “You have no idea.” 

“I love you too,” says Jane, “and I think I might have some idea.” She moves her head forward in a peculiar way, then seems to reconsider what she’s doing and rights herself. 

They relax like that, holding one another. Roxy thinks about the hearts and diamonds and the boxes they go into, and she wonders how her love for Jane would be classified. She thinks maybe human relationships just aren’t meant to work that way. “Jane,” she says, a little sleepily, “do you think we’re moirails?”

Jane kisses her, briefly, but with her intent unmistakeable. “No.”

**Author's Note:**

> So...affectionate...  
> This is the first fic I've published on AO3 as well as my first Homestuck fic! I hope you liked it~


End file.
